A vehicle door fixing apparatus is conventionally known, where a door lock striker provided at one of the vehicle door (a door panel) and a door opening portion (a vehicle body panel) engages with a latch mechanism of a door lock assembly provided at the other one of the vehicle door and the door opening portion on the basis of, that is, in response to, a closing operation of the vehicle door, and thus a vehicle door is fixed in a closed state.
According to some of the known vehicle door fixing apparatuses described above, a wedge member is provided at each of the vehicle panel and the door panel in such a manner that inclined surfaces of the respective wedge members are in contact with each other, and any of the wedge members is biased and pressed against the other one of the wedge members, in response to the closing operation of the vehicle door (for example, see JP2012-97495A (hereinafter referred to as Patent reference 1).
That is, on the basis of a force that the inclined surfaces, which are in contact with each other, push each other, the vehicle door in the closed state is pushed in a direction intersecting with an opening/closing direction of the vehicle door, that is, the vehicle door is pushed toward a hinge portion side serving as a fulcrum point of movement of the closing operation of the vehicle door, for example. Accordingly, looseness or backlash of the vehicle door is restricted with a simple configuration.
However, configurations of the vehicle panel and/or the door panel differ from one another depending on a vehicle model. Thus, for example, configurations of the wedge members arranged on panel surfaces of the respective vehicle body panel and the door panel, and/or a configuration of a bracket fixing the wedge members need to be changed in order to correspond to the configuration of the vehicle panel and the door panel. This might cause a complicated control work of part numbers and/or an increase in manufacturing costs.
A need thus exists for a vehicle door fixing apparatus and a fastening member thereof, which is not susceptible to the drawback mentioned above.